


say it's not her fault

by toxica939



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 07:02:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18655360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toxica939/pseuds/toxica939
Summary: Lucas has lived with Lucille for a year now. Ever since Daphne finally cracked and let Basile move in with her, and Lucas was left floundering to make rent.For the most part it's worked out fine; she's clean, she pays her rent on time, leaves him little notes on the fridge when she's feeling silly. She even wiped his face for him that time he got blackout drunk after Marc dumped him and he woke up with his head in the toilet.Lucas likes her a lot, is the point, likes living with her, likes how easily they slot around each other and the way that they're actually friends now. She's good people. She's the perfect roommate.And then Eliott happens.ORLucas falls in love with his roommate's new boyfriend





	say it's not her fault

Lucas has lived with Lucille for a year now. Ever since Daphne finally cracked and let Basile move in with her, and Lucas was left floundering to make rent.

For the most part it's worked out fine; she's clean, she pays her rent on time, leaves him little notes on the fridge when she's feeling silly. She even wiped his face for him that time he got blackout drunk after Marc dumped him and he woke up with his head in the toilet.

Lucas likes her a lot, is the point, likes living with her, likes how easily they slot around each other and the way that they're actually friends now. She's good people. She's the perfect roommate.

And then Eliott happens.

:::

The first time Lucas meets Eliott, he's nursing the hangover from hell, wrapped in his bedsheets and chugging a glass of water over the sink like an animal. He'd been on wingman duty for Arthur last night, charming some girl's boring friend to keep her occupied, and all the vodka had seemed like a good idea.

Lucas should really have known how it was going to go.

He'd made his excuses at 3am when the boring friend had gotten a little less boring and a lot more handsy. Mistakes were made.

So he's there, hydrating, minding his own business while his head pounds, and then-

“Shit, sorry! I didn't realise anyone was in here.”

There's a naked man in his kitchen. Miles of bare skin and artfully mussed hair. And shoulders. Oh god, the shoulders.

Lucas wipes his wet chin and stares. He doesn't think anyone can blame him.

The guy, to his credit, does move behind the island, but he doesn't leave.

“Are you alright?” the guy asks, which is fair, considering the way Lucas is still gaping at him.

Lucas puts his glass in the sink, clutching his sheets around him. “Who are you?”

The guy's got eyes like a fucking panther, and he blinks them lazily at Lucas, reaches out a casual hand like he isn't stood there with his dick out. “Eliott,” he says. “You must be Lucas?”

Eliott. Right. Lucille's bullshit about waiting until the third date to fuck him was just that then. Bullshit.

Lucas shakes his hand. It's warm and dry. Soft. He's beautiful. Jesus, maybe he's still drunk. Maybe he's passed out in a gutter somewhere and this is all just some awful fever dream.

“Hi,” Lucas says, belatedly. “Lucille's mentioned you.”

“Has she?” he brightens a little, which is unbearable. As if he wasn't pretty enough without that sunshine smile.

Lucas nods. He busies himself refilling his glass so he doesn't do something awful, like try and sneak a peek behind the island, or offer the guy a blow job or something.

He gestures vaguely with his water. “I'm going to...”

Eliott nods. “I was just going to make Lucille breakfast,” he says. “Do you want anything?”

The ground opening up and swallowing him would be good, but Lucas isn't that lucky. He shakes his head. “It's fine. I'll see you around.”

He doesn't look at Eliott's ass when he leaves. He definitely doesn't.

:::

After that, Eliott is everywhere.

He's under Lucas' feet when he's trying to cook dinner. He's sketching at the table, fingers smeared black, pen rolling between his teeth. He's sprawled on Lucas' sofa, Lucille under his arm, when Lucas wants to watch a movie. He's in the fucking bathroom, _every_ night, when Lucas wants to brush his teeth, forcing Lucas to slide past him in the doorway and avoid the reflection of his own flaming face in mirror.

And he's _nice_. He's friendly and cheerful and he seems faintly amused every time Lucas is rude to him.

To make matters worse, Lucille has never been happier. She keeps telling Lucas about all the wonderful little things Eliott does for her; how he brings her coffee in the morning, and rubs her shoulders while she's studying. Eliott, Eliott, Eliott.

And the walls are thin, alright? Eliott's clearly plenty good at lots of other things as well.

It's awful.

He's losing his mind.

:::

He seeks counsel with Yann.

“He can't be that hot,” Yann says.

Lucas rolls his forehead, where it's resting on the table between them. “He really, really can,” he says.

Yann puts his cup down. “Man. You've got it bad.”

“It's just that he's always there,” Lucas tells him, going back to his coffee mournfully. “There's no escape. Every time I turn around he pops up. He brushed his teeth while I was in the shower yesterday.”

A woman at the next table stifles a smile and Lucas stares at her until she turns away.

Yann leans in. “But he's definitely straight?”

“I don't know. Does it even matter? He's with Lucille. I like Lucille, Lucille's great. It's not like I'm about to...”

“Try and fuck her boyfriend?”

Lucas groans. “I'm a terrible person.”

Yann shakes his head. “You're not. You can't help who you like.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Avoid him? Tell him?”

“I'm not telling him! And I am avoiding him! What do you think I'm doing here with you?”

That gets him a look. “Mooching free coffee off me when I should be working. Look, you haven't done anything, right?” Lucas shakes his head. “So it's fine. Just play it cool, dude. Maybe it'll go away?”

:::

It doesn't go away.

:::

Eliott's on the couch when Lucas gets home, sat in the fading light with the TV on. He looks like he belongs there.

“Hi,” he says, perking up when he sees Lucas, which is weird. “There's beer in fridge if you want one.”

Lucas nods. “Where's Lucille?”

“She got called into work, said she might be late.”

“And you're still here,” it's not a question. Of course he's still here. Where else would he be? Obviously he'd be sprawled in Lucas' living room like a fucking centrefold. Why wouldn't that be Lucas' life?

Eliott's face drops. “She said it was okay,” he says. “But I can go, if you want.”

And now Lucas feels like a dick. God, what is wrong with him? “No, no, it's fine,” he scrubs his hands over his face. “I've had a shitty day, sorry. You said there was beer?”

Eliott nods. “In the fridge. Did you want to...talk about it?”

Lucas really doesn't, but it's not like he has anywhere else to be. He fetches himself a beer, and another one for Eliott to make up for being himself. He lets himself drop down on the other end of the couch, closer than he'd usually get to Eliott when there's any other choice.

“What are we watching?” he asks.

Eliott shrugs. “No idea, it was just on.”

They drink in silence for a while, watching a blonde woman on the TV arguing with a cop about her daughter.

“So, you don't like me very much,” Eliott says.

Lucas' heart doesn't stop, but it's a near thing, a blip. “I like you fine,” he says. Because he would, he's sure of it, if he'd let himself.

Eliott pulls a leg up under him, turning to face Lucas. He drapes his arm along the back of the couch when he does it and Lucas is suddenly very aware that if he lifted his shoulder Eliott's fingers would be right there.

“You leave the room every time I walk in,” Eliott points out.

Lucas shrugs. “I'm right here.”

“No, I just mean. I don't know. You're Lucille's friend, I want you to like me.”

Lucas looks at him, lets himself look. But there's so much of him, and his eyes are so steady on Lucas that it makes his heart pound, where it's hidden in his chest. He wants to fit his palm to the sharp line of Eliott's jaw and stroke, his hands are itching with it.

“I'm just not used to living with a couple,” is what he says. “And my last relationship ended kind of badly so,” he shrugs. There, that's good enough, Eliott will buy that.

“What happened?”

“He said I wasn't relationship material. Or something,” it makes his cheeks burn just thinking about it. And looking back, Lucas isn't even sure he _wanted_ to be relationship material with Marc, but he'd been hot and funny and the sex had been good. He hadn't ever expected that Marc would be the one to end things.

Eliott's hand settles over his shoulder, squeezing. “I don't believe that.”

The moment drags, and Lucas doesn't do a thing to stop it.

“You don't even know me,” he says in the end.

“But I want to,” Eliott says, and his eyes are still hot on Lucas' face, like a physical weight. It's a lot, having that much intensity levelled at him, he doesn't know what to do with it. “And listen,” Eliott says. “My last boyfriend got arrested for smashing up my parent's house, so you can't be worse at relationships than him.”

“Fuck, really?”

Eliott laughs, face creased and glowing, and he tells Lucas this long, rambling story about a guy from school and his blazing temper, and Lucas is trying to pay attention, he really is, but the word _boyfriend_ is reverberating in his head until it loses all meaning.

They put some music on after that, sharing stories about their parents forcing them to learn instruments they didn't want to play. Eliott has migrated closer somehow, pressed up against Lucas' arm after the fourth beer and he nudges him gently. “Do you still play though?” he asks. “I'd like to see that.”

Lucas laughs. “You really wouldn't. I don't even know if I still remember how, it's been years.”

He gets a soft smile, Eliott's voice lilting by his ear. “I bet you could.”

They talk about Eliott's art, and how his final year of art school is kicking his ass, about how Lucas has seen nothing but the inside of a lab for the last month and how his shitty day was just the latest in a long line of shitty days.

It's nice. It's easy. Eliott's like a warm fire at the end of a cold day; makes him want to stretch out and relax, makes him feel soft. And Lucas can imagine this, he can; coming home to Eliott every day, bitching about Imane and how she never lets things lie, warming his feet in Eliott's lap while the radio whispers in the corner and Eliott unfurls him, piece by piece. He can imagine this face in the morning, pillow creased and slowly stirring.

He _wants_.

:::

Lucille throws herself on Lucas' bed without invitation. “Talk to me, I'm bored,” she says, whining.

“I'm studying.”

“You're always studying, talk to me instead.”

He tries ignoring her for another minute, until she throws a pen at his head, and then gives up, twirling in his chair to face her. “What?”

She flops back into his pillows, legs crossed at the ankles. “Eliott said you guys hung out last night.”

That's a polite way to describe Lucas falling in love with her boyfriend, but seeing as he hasn't actually lost his entire mind yet, Lucas nods. “Yeah, he's cool.”

“Good,” she says. “I think he was worried you didn't like him. You know what you're like.”

“What am I like?”

But she waves him off. “Listen, would you mind if I decorated my room a little? It's still that weird shade of green your friend painted it – which is fine – but, if I'm going to be here for a while?”

Lucas shrugs. He still wants to know what he's like. “Do what you want. You'll probably have to paint it back if we both move out though.”

She grins at him. “I promise. Hey, maybe you could spruce up in here too. Aren't you a bit old for band posters?”

Lucas, who is definitely not too old for anything of the sort, goes back to his books.

With great dignity, he ignores the dirty sock she lays carefully over his shoulder when she leaves.

:::

It's not until a week later, that Lucas comes home to the smell of paint and finds Eliott standing in Lucille's room with his hands on his hips. All her furniture has been pushed against the far wall and there are white sheets everywhere.

He leans in the doorway. “Don't tell me she roped you into this.”

Eliott's gaze snaps to him and his grin rises like the sun. “I offered.”

“I suppose it is your day job,” Lucas allows, pushing off from the wall and going to stand at Eliott's elbow. The wall looms ahead of them, bare and sad and kind of a pukey green that Lucas has never really noticed before. “What are you going to do with it?”

“She said I could do what I liked as long as it was colourful,” Eliott tells him. Which explains the vast array of paint pots at their feet. “I'm thinking I might just make a mess and see if she notices,” he grins at Lucas, eyes dancing. “You in?”

Which is the short version of how Lucas ends up in his oldest t shirt and a pair of basketball shorts that definitely don't belong to him, flicking paint at Lucille's wall.

“You're getting it on the ceiling,” Lucas says, can't help but laugh, because Eliott looks ridiculous, hands and arms speckled in disco colours.

“It's all part of the process,” Eliott replies, snottily. “Besides, you've got it on your face.”

“What? Where?”

Eliott runs a wet finger down the middle of Lucas' nose, trailing paint, says, “Just there.”

Lucas gapes at him. “You did not just do that,” he gasps, and from there it mostly devolves into them slapping at each other, dancing away only to dart back in and start again.

Eliott catches his wrists in the end, holds them out to the sides to bring Lucas in close to him. “Enough, enough,” Eliott's saying, laughing, fingers squeezing, eyes meeting.

It's like the world narrows down, to nothing but this, and them, Eliott's chest heaving against his while their smiles drop away.

Lucas' heart is pounding. He has to tip his head back to look at up into Eliott's face and he doesn't know what he's supposed to do with what he finds there. Eliott's eyes have gone dark, and they dip down to Lucas' mouth and back up again. It's making Lucas' blood run hot.

He's leaning down at the same time Lucas starts straining up for him, lips parting, when the front door bangs open.

“Eliott!” Lucille shouts, feet thundering down the hallway, “Did you get started?”

They push away from each other like they've been burnt, Lucas trying to arrange his face into something that doesn't look like he was just waiting to get kissed, when Lucille sweeps into the room.

She's beaming, arms thrown around Eliott's neck and stealing the kiss Lucas almost tasted. Eliott's eyes are still on him.

She survey the state of the room. “This is really amazing guys. Lucas, thank you so much for helping.”

Lucas shrugs, tries to calm the churning in his belly. “It's fine.”

She whirls out of the room again, a hurricane, chattering about throw cushions and how wonderful they both are.

Eliott makes a move towards him. “Lucas-”

“Don't.”

He can't.

:::

He waits until after midnight, until the apartment is quiet, to sneak down the hall to bathroom. He pisses, washes his face, brushes his teeth, spits and gargles until his mouth feels clean inside his muddy head.

So obviously Eliott's stood there when he opens the door, eyes bright in the darkness.

“Sorry,” Eliott whispers. “Didn't mean to startle you.”

Eliott's done nothing but startle Lucas since they met so he shrugs it off. It's still hanging between them, the almost of earlier, Lucas knows he's not the only one who can feel it.

“It's fine. I was just going to bed,” he turns sideways in the doorway, meaning to slip past and escape to the solitude of his room but Eliott pins him there, with the door frame up against his spine, nothing more than a hand on his arm and the weight of his gaze holding Lucas still.

“About earlier-”

Lucas shakes his head. “Let's not.”

“But I-”

“Eliott, please,” he's not above begging, he's really not. Having Eliott this close is making his skin feel too tight, like there's too much inside to hold in. He's throbbing with it. All he wants to do is go to bed, stare at the ceiling for a few hours and pretend this whole sorry mess is not his life.

He moves to leave, for real this time, but Eliott's other hand comes up to catch him and Lucas means to push him away, he really does, but then they're kissing. Out here in the open, hands all over each other. Eliott's mouth is hot, and it shouldn't be gentle, the way they fall together, chests bumping, mouths clinging, but it is. There's a storm brewing in Lucas' chest and he lets it bubble up, pours every ounce of longing into it. If this is the only chance he gets he wants Eliott to know.

Eliott's hands slide up through his hair, back down to cup his face, and Lucas finds himself being tilted this way and that, while Eliott steals biting, breathless kisses from him. And Lucas melts for it, gets his arms around Eliott finally, feels the width of him, the points of his hips and the heaving, billowing shape of his ribs. He lets himself be kissed, tastes the inside of Eliott's mouth until it doesn't taste like anything at all and the air is humming, where it's swirling around them.

There's a noise down the hallway, Lucille moving about in her room, and reality slams into Lucas as quickly as Eliott washed it away. He pushes at Eliott's chest, holds him at arm's length to catch his breath.

“We can't do this.”

“Lucas-”

“You have a girlfriend,” Lucas reminds him bitterly. “You have a girlfriend and she's my fucking friend. Fuck you.”

He slams his way back into his room without a backward glance, leans back against the door in case Eliott has any stupid ideas about following him.

Fuck. What the fuck is he doing?

He can still feel Eliott all over him, his mouth is burning with it; numb and buzzing.

He crumples under the weight of it all, everything he can't have, and buries his face in his hands.

If no one sees him sobbing, it doesn't count.

:::

Avoiding Eliott is easier than it had seemed the first time he tried it. As it turns out, all he has to do is not go home.

Lucille calls him a couple of times, sends a couple of messages.

_I haven't seen you in days! Are you ok? Are you shacked up with some hot guy somewhere? Let me know you're still alive! X_

Lucas glances over at Yann scratching his balls at the far end of the couch he's letting Lucas sleep on, sends back: _Something like that. I'm fine._

There's probably no harm in letting it get back to Eliott that he hooked up, but the thought makes him feel queasy for some reason.

“Dude,” Yann had said, with feeling, when Lucas had rolled up at his place in the middle of the night, and it had been all Lucas needed to let it all go. Yann had tucked him up on the couch, arms around him, and let him cry until there was nothing left in him.

There still isn't, three days later, just a hollow echo in the centre of him where is heart used to beat.

“You're going to have to face him at some point,” Yann comments, eyeing Lucas' phone where it's buzzing on the coffee table.

“It's not him,” Lucas says.

Yann kicks him. “So what? You can't sit here rotting forever.”

Lucas sighs, feeling prickly, and buries himself deeper into his hoodie. “I guess I'm going to have to move out.”

It's the only smart thing to do. Lucille can move Eliott in and Lucas can die alone and everything will be fine.

“Don't be stupid,” Yann say. “Come on, man. So you kissed the dude, it's hardly the crime of the century.”

“I'm in love with him,” Lucas says plainly, because he needs someone to know.

Yann's face slackens and crumples in sympathy, and his hand, when he folds it over Lucas', is gentle. “I know,” he sighs. “Have you tried talking to him? Maybe he feels the same.”

“He doesn't.”

“Have you asked him?”

Lucas level his with a look. “Don't you think if he did, he'd have broken up with Lucille by now?”

And Yann must not have anything to say to that, because he doesn't say anything at all.

He does text Lucas from work though. _Have a shower and GO HOME. TALK TO HIM_

:::

Lucas doesn't know what he's expecting when he lets himself in through the door. Eliott and Lucille cuddled up on the couch, maybe, that would be pretty normal. Maybe laughter down the hallway. Maybe silence, if he's lucky.

He's not expecting Lucille to be standing in the kitchen crying into her dinner.

She startles when she sees him, wiping at her face.

“Are you okay?” Lucas asks, wavering in the doorway. She's obviously not, but crying girls aren't really his thing. Sue him.

Lucille sniffs, face rippling. “Eliott ended things.”

Lucas braces a hand on the counter top to steady himself while the earth shifts under his feet. “He what?”

“He broke up with me.”

“When?”

She's busying herself tiding her plate away but she turns to pull a face at him. “What? This afternoon, what does that matter?”

“It doesn't,” he assures her. He lets her flit about for a minute. “Did he say why?”

He doesn't know what he's hoping to hear, it's not as though Eliott's going to have told her he wants to be with Lucas instead, is it? She'd have come at him with the carving knife in that case, wouldn't be washing it to distract herself.

She sighs, hands in the water. “He said he didn't think we were right for each other. Whatever that means,” she whirls on him, water flying. “Did he say anything to you?”

“No,” Lucas says. “I haven't even been here, have I?”

It makes her sag again, folding in on herself. “I really liked him.”

Lucas nods. He feels like he's supposed to give her a hug or something but doing it would also feel shady, so he just stands there uselessly instead. “Maybe he'll change his mind,” he offers. It costs him something, to say it, but he owes her.

She shakes her head. “No. He was pretty sure about it. And why should I take him back if he can make me feel like this anyway? Fuck him.”

“Fuck him,” Lucas agrees, smiling for her, because she's his friend, and he's no Yann but he's the only one here.

Inside, there's something rising up, beating it's wings behind his ribs.

:::

There's a drawing on his pillow, when he finally makes it to his room; a hedgehog with its face buried in a book.

On the other side is an address.

:::

Eliott looks surprised when he opens the door, which is hilarious, considering how pathetic Lucas was feeling about running over here as soon as it got dark out.

He holds the door open for Lucas anyway, ushers him inside with a palm spread wide across the middle of his back.

“I wasn't sure you'd-”

Lucas pushes him up against the wall to cut him off, hands shaking on Eliott's shoulders. “Shut up,” Lucas says, “Just...”

And Eliott must get it, he must understand that there's too much in Lucas' head right now to talk about, because he dips in before Lucas can finish, fuses their mouths together before they can ruin things.

It's nothing like the time in the bathroom, nothing hushed and tender about it. Eliott reels him in with long, dragging swipes of his tongue, panting for air in the gaps they take to strip each other.

Lucas loses most of his clothes on the way to the bedroom, brief pauses on the way to press each other up against things. Eliott's mouth fastened to his neck and chest, hot flashes of tongue over each of his nipples, enough to tip Lucas' head back, have him swearing at the ceiling and sinking his hands into Eliott's hair to urge him down, get that scalding mouth where it needs to be.

Eliott's bed is wide and plush, room enough for the way they're rolling together. He takes Lucas to pieces in handprints and moans, spreads him out across unwashed sheets and rises over him, elbows in the mattress, dick sliding hot and aching alongside Lucas' own.

“You have no idea,” Eliott's saying, frowning, eyes serious and dark. “You don't-”

Lucas shushes him again, rolls his hips until the only thing Eliott can do is groan.

He's never felt anything like this before; never lost time between the planes of someone else's shoulder blades and the fleshy backs of their thighs.

But he'll take Eliott's weight, take all of it, take anything he can get.

:::

He comes to slowly, stretching out all the aches and pains of last night across the cool bed. They forgot to close blinds and he takes himself in; scuffed red and white, striped yellow in the morning sun.

It takes him a second to realise that Eliott's not there. That there's a dent in the pillow but the sheets are cold. He wanders out into the living area, thinking maybe Eliott's making breakfast or having a shower, something like that, only there's nothing there to greet him. Just the ringing silence of an empty apartment he's never seen in day light.

He takes in the mess, the stacks of books and scribbled on papers strewn around, listens to the clock tick on the wall.

He washes up at the sink, gives himself an hour, to sit in his rumpled clothes on the edge of Eliott's couch with his hands in his lap like an idiot, before he accepts the inevitable.

Eliott's not coming back.

:::

Lucille's sat in one of the dining chairs when he gets home, looking like his parents used to when he was sneaking in from a party in high school.

Lucas draws up short. “Hi,” he says, stupidly. He moves to go straight to his room, anything but have to sit through another post mortem of her and Eliott while he's still covered in fingerprint bruises and aching inside.

“Where have you been?” Lucille asks, and it's her voice, more than anything, that halts him. It's like ice spreading through the apartment, brittle and shivering.

“What?”

She stands up, Eliott's note pinched between her fingers. She waves it at him. “Where have you been?”

He manages to meet her eyes, because she deserves that much.

His silence speaks volumes.

“Are you fucking serious?” she sounds a little bit like she might cry, and it's worse, that, than if she was screaming at him.

He flaps his hands a little, can't think of a single thing to say to make any of this better. He doesn't even have the energy to defend himself, he left everything in Eliott's bed, things he isn't even sure he ever wants back.

“How long?”

He shakes his head.

“How long, Lucas?”

“It's not like that,” he starts, but he hasn't got anywhere to go from there because he hasn't got a clue what it is like.

“Were you fucking him the whole time? Is that what this is? Did he dump me for _you_?”

“No. I don't know. It's not like that, nothing even happened until...”

“Until when, Lucas?” she's in his face now, knuckles pushing against his chest.

“Last night! Okay?” and off her look, “He kissed me, a few days ago but that's it, I promise you, that's all.”

She spins away, pacing across the floor. “So that's why you vanished, and that's why he.”

She looks at him, and he knows he should be apologising right now, but he can't, his chest feels hollowed out and echoing. She's wrong, if she thinks she's hurting more than he is, she's got no fucking clue.

“You're asshole,” she spits at him. “Both of you. What, did you think I wouldn't notice when you brought him home? _Oh hi, Lucille, here's my new boyfriend, does he look familiar?_ Are you fucking kidding me?”

He'll remember, after, that round about there was the moment he started to shut down. He knows she ranted and raved at him for a while longer, knows he stood there, silent, while she packed her bags and slammed the door, but he didn't feel any of it.

One thing he does remember though, is her parting shot. “You keep treating people like this, Lucas, you're going to end up a very lonely old man.”

He puts his fist through the cereal cabinet door when she leaves, watches his knuckles drip red on to the tiled floor. It doesn't even hurt.

:::

Predictably, the boys think the only way to fix to Lucas' crumbling shell of a life, is to get him violently drunk.

Which is why he's on the couch Basile probably fucks on with his head on Arthur's shoulder waxing lyrical about Eliott Demaury and his fucking hands, instead of doing any of the thousand and one other things he should be doing right now.

“I don't get it though,” Basile says from the floor. “Why did he take off?”

“Because he doesn't want me,” Lucas reminds him. They've been through this.

“But he must do. Why else would he break up with whatsherface?”

“Lucille.”

“Right.”

Lucas bangs his head against Arthur. “I don't know. I don't care.”

Yann shares a look with Arthur over Lucas' head, he just knows it.

“Lucas,” Arthur says, sliding an arm around his shoulders. “What did he actually say?”

“Nothing! He was just gone.”

“Right,” Yann chips in. “But you fucked right? What did he say before that?”

Lucas shrugs. “He just left me a note in my room, with his address on it.”

“Right. And between that, and the pair of you banging...?”

Lucas is starting to feel shifty. “There wasn't really a lot of talking.”

They boys groan in unision. “Lucas!”

“What?”

Arthur gives him a shake. “You need to call him, dude. At least find out what happened. What if there was some kind of emergency and he didn't really ditch out on you at all?”

“He'd probably have called by now though, if that were the case,” Basile points out.

Lucas thinks about the message on his phone, received while he was trying to tape his knuckles up with his left hand: _I miss you x_

He reaches down to snag the vodka bottle out of Basile's hand, takes a deep, burning swig. Kids himself that it'll help.

:::

The knock on the door catches him by surprise. He ordered food a couple of minutes ago and finds himself staring at his phone, baffled, as though it might have somehow turned up already.

Eliott looks awful. By which Lucas means he looks better than anyone Lucas has ever met, but also worn thin, dark around the eyes and drawn tight.

“Hi,” Lucas says, for lack of anything better to open with. He looks down at his sweatpants and the t shirt he's been wearing since last night.

“Hi,” Eliott says. “Are you going to let me in?”

Lucas does, watches Eliott take his jacket off and perches with him on the edge of the couch.

It's awkward, and Lucas hates it.

“I wanted to say sorry,” Eliott starts. “I shouldn't have just disappeared like that. It's just, there's a lot of things you don't know about me and I,” he shrugs. “I freaked out. I'm sorry.”

Lucas braces his arms across his knees. “Right.”

“Lucas, this thing, with us, it's-”

He shakes his head, he doesn't want to hear this. “It's fine, don't worry about it.”

Eliott turns to him, exasperated. “For once in your life, will you just let me finish?”

“I already know what you're going to say.”

“You don't! You never let me say anything! Lucas, I'm in love with you and you don't-”

“You're what?” he feels like his ears are ringing, like he's watching this from outside of his own body.

And then Eliott turns those eyes on him again and he slams back into himself. “I'm in love with you.”

“You're not,” Lucas tells him. He can't be. That's not what this has ever been about. This is about Lucas, and him always wanting things he can't have.

“Of course I am. Why else would I be doing this? Lucille told me you'd met some guy and I just couldn't stand it any more. I couldn't be with her when all I want is you.”

“She moved out,” Lucas says, stunned, and for lack of a better response.

“I know. She called me, she's...still pretty annoyed.”

Lucas laughs, can't help himself. Talk about an understatement.

Eliott's quiet for a moment, watching him, and then he shakes himself, reaches over to grab hold of Lucas' uninjured hand. “Lucas, listen to me. It's like,” he huffs, frustrated. “I feel like, my whole life I've been waiting for something, and I never knew what it was. But it's you, Lucas. I was waiting for you. And I don't want to wait any more. I know I hurt you, and I'm so sorry, but I can't stand this,” and he's so earnest with it, is the thing, so steady, that Lucas has no choice but to hear him.

Lucas looks down at their hands, Eliott's gripped around his, and lets himself start to believe that maybe this is happening. He feels like he's shaking, like everything should be shaking.

He turns his hand over, threads his fingers through Eliott's and holds on. If Eliott can be brave, maybe he can too. “Me too,” he says. “I love you too.”

Eliott's face goes slack, like he can't believe it either and it makes Lucas laugh again, something brittle and terrified and alive bubbling up through him. “Like, quite a lot,” he adds, in case that wasn't clear.

And then his face is in Eliott's hands, Eliott's forehead pushed tight against his, noses sliding together. Lucas holds his wrists, breathes him in, tries to make a memory of this exact moment, while anything feels possible.

“So?” Eliott asks. “Are we doing this?”

Lucas kisses him, instead of answering, takes exactly what he wants from Eliott's mouth.

They're doing this.

 

**Author's Note:**

> i'm perfectshadeof on tumblr if you want to say hi


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